ABSTRACT
Jefferson, in an important letter to Peter Carr writes of a 'long entertained hope' that Virginia would soon have an avant-garde institution of higher education 'where every branch of science, deemed useful at this day, should be taught in its highest degree'. Jefferson's interest in natural history was lifelong, as shown by the inclusion of a professorship in natural history in his educational bills. In his 'Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge', he proposes a professor-ship of natural philosophy and natural history. The importance of criticism for education cannot be underappreciated. Condorcet states it makes erudition 'truly productive'. Jefferson's attitude toward medicine was distinctly ambivalent, and even sometimes hostile. As Merrill Peterson notes, for Jefferson, it occupied 'the shady ground between science and charlatanism'. Jefferson's liberal eudaimonism is the normative notion that freedom and happiness are the ends of politics, the former subserving the laws of nature and nations is an especially important subject of education.
